Got inspired anew and added some more of the features.  Also I improved the
realism of the planet appearance by looking at some old NASA photos and picking
out a nice, fairly accurate coloration scheme.  I used a two layer approach to
the clouds to get the different scales and haze, and I used the emitting media
trick for the rocket exhaust and the planet's atmosphere.
    The idea is for a heavy lifting scheme that will drop an extremely long
Kevlar cable to the surface and haul multiple ton loads directly into space.
The power source is a large sunlight collector (not shown yet) and water is the
"fuel"- flash heated to plasma.
    I am doing a serious study of the solar thermal propulsion technique and
will have a paper or two posted on my website shortly detailing it and the
calculations for it.
    As always, any comments, criticisms, barbs or flowers accepted toward
bettering the results.

Cheers!

Chip Shults
My robotics, space and CGI web page - http://home.cfl.rr.com/aichip

light_source{0#macro k(_)sphere{13*z+i*_.5pigment{agate}finish{phong.3}}#end
1}#macro _(s,i,g)#if(s)k(1)k(-1)_(s-1i+g,g)#end#end _(3x+3*y<2,-2>)_(2x,y)_(
2x-y,x)_(4x*3,-y)_(4<3,1>x)_(2x*6,-y)

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